In recent years, an image forming apparatus that is called an MFP (multifunction peripheral) and which is provided with printer and scanner functions, includes a Web browser, and directly accesses a Web server without the intervention of a PC (personal computer). Accordingly, the MFP can print Web content, and operate a Web application.
Further, regarding such an MFP provided with a Web browser, a system has been proposed that has a configuration in which an operation screen for executing functions that the MFP originally has is provided from an external Web server, and the operation screen is operated via the Web browser. In such a system, a user of the MFP inputs instructions to the MFP via the operation screen displayed via the Web browser, and the inputted instructions are transmitted to the Web server by the Web browser of the MFP. The Web server that has received the instructions requests the MFP to execute various processing in accordance with the content of the instructions inputted by the user. Then, the MFP that has received such a request executes the requested processing. Thereby, it is not necessary to hold, in the MFP, the entire operation screen information for operating the MFP, and it is also possible to make a change to the operation screen in the Web server using a similar method to a general method for making a change to a Web application.
However, in such a system, in order for both the MFP and the Web server to manage the login states of the user, the user had to perform operations for logging into and logging out of both the MFP and the Web server. Meanwhile, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-83809 has proposed a configuration in which, in an MFP provided with a Web browser, login information is transmitted to a specific Web server when logging into the MFP, and logout information is transmitted to that Web server when logging out of the MFP.
However, with the above conventional technique, even if a logout operation button is displayed via the Web browser in the operation screen provided by the Web server, a logout request is merely transmitted to the Web server, and logging out of the MFP is not performed. Accordingly, it has been necessary to log out of the MFP separately, resulting in a problem in that the user has to perform an additional time-consuming operation.
On the other hand, with the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-83809, the user can log out of both the MFP and the Web server by logging out of the MFP by operating a hard key for logout. However, since the user is operating a screen displayed via the Web browser, there is a demand for also giving a logout instruction on the screen of the Web browser. That is, operations cannot be performed serially using the Web browser, and thus there has been the problem of causing the user to perform troublesome operations.